A blog for the Alexandria, Virginia, Chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

The Harmonizer Year 2013 In Review

We began 2013 with our traditional Alexandria Inova Hospital
Holiday Sing followed by the Heat Glow at Jack and Pat Pitzer’s home.Then later in the month, we acknowledged the
great work of our fellow Harmonizers at the annual Presidents’ Awards Banquet at
Durant. Alan Wile was installed as president – his fourth year to serve – along
with his officer team.

Another special January event was the dinner concert
with reigning BHS quartet gold medalists RINGMASTERS from Sweden.Ken Rub organized the grand evening at the
Masonic Temple.

The wonderful all-day coaching session with Tony
DeRosa in March was a lot of work to kick-off our contest package work but we
laughed and laughed with Tony teasing Joe the whole time. The M-AD
International prelims contest was on a snowy March weekend in Parsippany,
NJ.Our quartet DA CAPO, (Ryan Griffith,
Tony Colosimo, Joe Sawyer, Wayne Adams), qualified to go to Toronto.

In April we hosted the Southern Division Convention in
Reston. We had 10 quartets in the contest with Harmonizers in them. Chuck
Harner was chairman for us. Our chorus did not compete as we were headed to the
International contest in July.

We also had a fantastic coaching session with choreographer
extraordinaire Cindy Hansen in April and then came the pre-competition retreat
with our hero David Wright at the end of May at McDaniel College in MD. Chuck
McKeever was retreat chair again. After working all day Saturday, we had the
joy of David giving us a mini-version of his popular Barbershop History class.
The 27 members of the Class of 2013 did a great Jeopardy skit led by their
president Rich Hewitt.

We held our International Convention Send-Off
Performance in June at Bishop Ireton High School.We are proud of our hard-earned third-place
bronze medal at the BHS 75th International Convention. (Our chorus
photo forming a 75 on the steps of the hotel made the cover of the Society’s
magazine.) The 110-man chorus earned 91.7% singing the ballad “All the Things
You Are” arranged by Steve Delehanty, and singing the uptune “Anything Goes”
arranged by Kevin Keller. We were pleased to use choreography from our own
Carlos Barillo.Master director Joe
Cerutti with his team of associate director Tony Colosimo, and assistant
directors Terry Reynolds, Mike Kelly and Will Cox helped us succeed.Tony’s weekly barbershop craft maxims made us
self accountable. We had a killer front row too with great props designed by TJ
Donahue.

Our chapter leaders made the Toronto trip a success
too: Carl Kauffman with major help from Bob Rhome (who also makes all meeting
and space reservations for the chapter) and Craig Kujawa.Rick and Peggy Wagner hosted a GREAT Harmo
hide-away.We had seven Special Forces
(guys who live far away and made special arrangements to sing with us) on the
risers. And Ian Poulin sold us scrip to use in paying our hotel bills, which
netted the chapter a handsome fee for our coffers.

In the summer prior to Toronto, we sang again for
the Jefferson Awards ceremony in DC - this year at Arena Stage – Chris Wallace
was emcee. Other performances included singing at John Carlyle Park in
Alexandria; at the Alexandria Hospital in July; outdoors at Alexandria's
historical Market Square; and a performance with MAYHEM at the wedding of our
Master Director Joe and Bridgette Winter.A huge number of us were on hand to sing for and with 5 other chapters
performing at the "Dog Days of August" event hosted by the Prince
William Chapter in Manassas. Frequently,
our a cappella ensemble called TBD sang with us on shows. Greg Tepe is our
resident show producer for such events like the DC show for the Odd Fellows. In
September we initiated “Let Us Entertain You – a Harmonizer Musical Outreach to
Senior Living Neighborhoods.”

In October we hosted the M-AD Contest & Convention
in Ocean City, MD. Chuck Harner served again as our chair with many helpers
from the chapter, their families and our auxiliary FRIEND IN HARMONY.We also sang in order to qualify for the
district contest in 2014 since we could not be at the division contest in ’14
due to our trip to Normandy France. We sang Friday night after the quartet
contest. Many members made the trip up after work from the DC area. We sang the
same package as Toronto and did qualify.

Several Harmonizers are board member leaders of the
district, including president Bill Colosimo, secretary Keith Jones, treasurer
Bob Eckman, at large member Dennis Ritchey. Other members serve on the M-AD
Operations Team. Joe Cerutti and Gary
Plaag are members of the BHS board (until Joe accepted a BHS staff position) and
Chris Buechler is parliamentarian. Several members of the chapter are certified
judges in the BHS too – Cerutti, T. Colosimo, O’Brien, Buechler, Plaag, Devine,Harner, Santora.

In November we sang a Veteran’s Day show for 850
kids at Oakton Elementary; and we launched a full holiday 'push' in early
December by singing at the City of Alexandria Christmas Tree Lighting with
Mayor Bill Euille, then performing at
three of our own dinner holiday shows December 6 & 7 at First Baptist. The
show was “sold-out” in about September thanks to work by the members with
leadership from Josh Roots, Scipio Garling and Ian Poulin.

A special surprise was the appearance with us on the
Friday night show of The American Boychoir from Princeton, NJ.One of their staffers, Myles Glancey (and a
former Harmonizer), called about their singing with us since their concert that
night in DC had been canceled. About 20 boys from 4th to 8th
grades making great music, and they loved seeing the men singers having fun
too.

Brad Jones launched an online auction with co-chair
Randall Eliason.That auction then
became a silent auction at the show.We
netted handsomely from that.AND we sold
tickets for next year’s show and have a good percentage already sold! Some
traditions continued – Roger Day and crew making the place look like Santa’s
workshop, all the holiday goodies brought in by members, work and support of
the FRIENDS group (Sandy Stamps, president), and traditional show characters
like Santa Claus (Bruce Minnick), Jack In The Box (Terry Reynolds), Will Cox
reciting “Twasthe Night Before
Christmas” and the “monks” using cue cards for the words for “Hallelujah Chorus.
” But also ask us about the dancing reindeer and the ice skater!

We closed out a very busy and productive year
performing for an audience of children at the George Washington Masonic
National Memorial on December 17; then 29 Harmonizers entertained Sunday evening Dec 22nd
at the White House during the holiday public tour and finally, several chapter
members sang in or helped staff the 3rd annual “No Borders Youth
Chorus” concert held at Carnegie Hall.

In September the chapter membership climbed to 238.
We held open auditions to bring in new members this year. Besides shows, we
raised money for the chapter with our sales of White House Ornaments (Sandy
Stamps), Entertainment Books (Chuck Harner) and scrip (Ian Poulin). During the
year there were recording sessions (using First Baptist choir room) toward
another album.A number of guys enjoy
the afterglow on Tuesday nights at LaPortas on King Street.And quartet promo guy, Calvin Schnure,
organized our annual chapter Put Together Quartet contests that are really fun.

Two members of the Harmonizer family died this year
– Dick Weick and Jon Abel.